The Tavern

Obviously there needs to be a very good and ballsy player at the wheel, but what are the specific non-player related factors for a melee character? Like is early altar + good weapon good enough, or do you need the RNG to be favouring you every step of the way to even approach 19k?

1/100 characters are viable (not quits before a Lair branch) if you play VSMo^Chei, in my experience. You must have statue form usable before Lair branches, or have some source of rPois and a decent amount of AC available. You need infinite teleport (so 0.17 and earlier, 0.17 is best probably) as early as possible (preferably earlier), you need Passage of Golubria as early as possible to shave turns walking around, you need a lot of luck in staircase spawns, you need an altar to spawn as early as possible, Robe of Vines would be nice to speed your regeneration, etc. and most importantly you need good luck in Pan (don't get 48 floors).

You may be asking: Why not play a VSWr of Chei to start with the Book of Spatial Translocations? The reason is that you will die building piety if you are going at the turncount needed to win in 19k turns.

1/10 characters are viable with DDGl of Makhleb. You need a decent axe and a decent platebody to spawn. You still need an early source of infinite teleport, and a wand of hasting is helpful. I think the luck distribution is a little different here. If you can survive the early game, which is not too hard, you can usually be alright through 3 runes, but extended can be brutal. There can be significant sunk costs, as it seems like a character may be viable, contingent on some good drops which may never come. So in essence some of your luck is backloaded into Vault 5 or Slime drops. OTOH, a VSMo has an extremely hard time surviving early game, but once you can cast statue form it's basically smooth sailing the rest of the way since you don't need to worry about 3 of your slots and you do a shit ton of damage and can abuse passage of golubria with the bite attack MP vamp, so your luck is frontloaded. This at least gets rid of the frustration of sunk cost DDGl's, but it can get boring to replay the early game constantly.

I'm not sure if 0.16 is better, as in theory, you could get a lot more AC with stoneskin + statue (remember the good old days of 40/40 defenses in Vaults with Chei using statue, stoneskin, and phase shift? good times), but you are unable to engage in Passage trickery in Zot which is worth a good few hundred turns.

So in conclusion you absolutely need the RNG to go your way over most of the game in order to get a 15 rune win in 19k turns with melee.

Charly once said that these two things are very important. Indeed, they are basic necessities.


Here again a well-known quotation: "you need luck in every part of the game" (4thArra)


A ring of teleportation was an extremely useful (speedrun-)item when you were able to activate it, so I agree to "0.17 and earlier".


That's an interesting question. I personally don't know which version is better. Note that cTele ring and spell were also available in 0.16.


That's close to what 4thArra said.

Charly once played a DDGl in which he could have beaten 19 k. I saw parts of it, Charly afterwards told me his char died in pan because he failed to continue with full concentration. If you like, look at YAD - Charly and another hunt for 19 k.

I was hoping to try and do it in 0.20, but with all the recent changes it does seem a lot harder to shave off turns now, especially since pretty much every single 19k turn winner played in 0.17/0.16.

But, I guess I'll just try a bunch of VSMo and see how it goes, but my luck is incredibly bad in regards to statue form showing up early

like I said, 1/100, based on my experience.

turukano: cTele can save backtracking time, but having Passage for zot 5 can shave several hundred turns, though I guess you can get a similar result in 0.16 with good luck. I'm really not sure which one is better, it's probably pretty even, possibly with a slight edge towards 0.17 since you are also allowed to use Passage in Hell ends.

Could you elaborate?

PoG is fueled by magic, which is quickly replenished with the VS's magic bite.

I've been trying out a bunch of DD,Mi and Tr. With my best runs so far being a MiBe and TrMo^Chei. MiBe is probably winnable, but TrMo^chei falls apart in the lair branches. The defense is just too bad, and combined with slow speed basically wrecks me.

DD is most definitely faster than both, but finding an early makhleb altar is such a pain. Most of the time I've discovered lair before makhleb. I'll probably continue with MiBe until I win it to get a feel for super-fast speedruns, but I suspect I'll have to switch to DD if I want that 19k turncount. Or perhaps DE since I'm playing in 0.20, and purplered got the world record in 0.19, but I am incredibly crappy with mages in general, let alone speedrun mages.

In my opinion you want to take too many steps at once. Your fastest (online) 15-runer up to now is a NaMo of Chei in 114 k turns.

If I were you I'd look for smaller steps. Don't care about the question if your DD finds a Makh altar in 2, 3 or 4 k turns. Just play without 'o', clear most of the levels (maybe 80 - 90 %) and get a feeling how speedrunning works. It's quite different from a game in which you don't care about turns.

If you are able to beat 60 k in your first speedrun-15-runer you'll be really good. To get into the actual top 1000 scores you'll have to beat about 62 k turns.

And if, afterwards, you still enjoy speedrunning I'd look for a new aim.

Very important: play with a species/class/god you like.

Good luck!

Yeah, you're right, I should probably take it a little slower, and set smaller goals. Like, this MiBe was easily winnable but I kept trying to go too fast, even when I get my 1st rune in under 6k turns.

I would seriously recommend chei or makhleb (even makhleb from the start on a Minotaur) over trying to do a Berserker for a 15 rune speedrun. Trog is miserable in extended at low XL and surviving his wrath is also miserable without infinite teleport or even a wand of teleportation.

I've been doing a ton more chei games, and I have a question: I normally move diagonally in open areas to maximize the tiles seen, but is it worth the turns lost to move near walls so I don't get swarmed as a chei worshipper?